Looking for Teammates for Dekiru Yo

Its come, time to gather a proper crew together to further advance my adventure racing. For the past races that I have done, none of them have been with a completely in tact team.

Started out with 3 of us wanting to give it a go, one deciding its not it but was fun, the other thinking its fun but hard work, and now can’t get anyone else that I know to join me in doing races or training together.

If you don’t know what Adventure racing is check out www.arocsport.com.au . these guys put on some good races, and what they consist of is Trail running, Mountain biking, kayaking, a bit of swimming, navigation and FUN! All mixed together. There are other races as well that I will want to look into more and they may include racing at night and other challenges.

So I am looking for 2 members either male or female. (ideally one of each as the mixed races are better) who likes to challenge themselves, is reasonably fit, wants to train, can mountain bike and run, and loves adventure and to get dirty.

Me I’m not that fit as most of you guys know. But I want to train up heaps.

So if anyone knows of people who wants to try adventure racing let me know. I’m keen to form a good team and competitive. Competitive meaning not finish last and have fun. Really, that only means I aim to finish before the presentation, and eventually as the team progresses finish in hopefully top 20 overall.

TEAM “DEKIRU YO” is going to be a force!!
Waiting to hear from people.

The Vertical Puzzle

Headed down to St Peters Indoor Rock Climbing Centre with Richard, Cherie and Mike last night and got introduced to a whole new sport. Indoor Rock Climbing!

Initial thoughts ranged from “this is going to be so fun” to “man I need some strength in my upper body”
Some other thoughts included. “Uh what am I doing?” and “this is so cool!”

Its like a vertical puzzle with all the colours stuck on the wall. You just have to figure out how to get up its pretty cool. Mind you I was only on the green lines and tried one blue one which seemed pretty easy when I did it.

Not exactly sure how many climbs we actually did, but it was pretty damn fun. My arms got sore too, and I guess I want proper climbing shoes next time, was slipping a bit so that probably didn’t help. It’s a good workout as well, not cardio but more strength. Forearms were sore particularly my right one. Back of shoulders a bit sore as well but nothing too bad.

Funny moment was towards the end, my last climb, got stuck on the wall, as my arms just didn’t want to move any more and I was losing grip on my foot. Just couldn’t get up to the next hold, and on the final attempt, maybe 5th, I got there and then couldn’t get to the next. This was a sign to call it a day. But damn its pretty fun. Looking forward to going again.

Thanks doods.

Racing season starts!

Well the adventure racing season started and this time I teamed up with Luke and Tsalina in Team "Just Trippin" The race was held in Umina at Pearl Beach and the weather that we got was perfect, couldn't ask for better weather. Blue skies, 22 degs, not windy at all just a slight breeze.

The pace of the race wasn’t going to be that fast as Luke was sick, Tsalina had a late boozer, and I’m just way off the pace of those 2. This could be seen by the start which involved a 500m beach run which turned out to be a light jog for us. Our boat was then stolen right in front of us and then our strongest leg to start us off, kayaking.

As normal we struggled with the kayaking straight away, hitting about 2-3 other kayaks on the way out. Eventually we made it to the shore of the next beach, even managed to over take a few teams. Then it was time for me to go for a swim to get a clue and for Luke and Tsalina to load the kayaks.

We finished this and now time to go for a run, which was then followed by a mountain bike up hills which sucks. We were probably stuck in the top 25 for most of the time and now it was riding uphill. Which slowed me down heaps, have to train on this one. But going up hill meant that we got to run back down hill. Which was good but we kinda walked a bit.

The slow downhill might have cost us a top 20 finish, because there was a split in the field for the top 20 places if we could get there in time and we saw the last 2 kayaks filled which meant we would be out of the top 20. We continued on tho, and the pace for me was pretty good, but a bit fast on the uphill sections.

We had now completed most of the CP around this area now back to our bikes parked all the way back up that hill. Damn! Back up the hill back on the bike, and what else do we get, the dreaded “HIKE A BIKE”. Tahts right you read it right. We had to go hiking and rock climbing with our bikes. But once we got to the top it was all downhill and back home. Finally we saw the end in sight with a last bike ride down the beach and run to the finish line. We finished in 3hrs 44mins and 57 secs. Very slow I guess but good way to start the season. We managed to see the winners come over the finish line too. If your wondering why its cause they had to do an Extra 1 hr bonus leg, that we missed out on.

This race had a different little twist in it where we could answer trivia questions and you could win a prize for it. We had no idea for the first few CP where the trivia questions were but eventually we found them and managed to answer a few.

We ended up winning this prize which was a shock to us all, but really funny. Cause the three of us were sitting down watching the presentation when Alina announced that the teams that won the prize was teams 127 and 128. Luke thoughts were “wow those numbers are close together”, followed by my thoughts of”ohhhh sick those numbers are consecutive” and of course the brains (Tsalina) in the team was jumping around saying hey that’s us, which saw both Luke and I turn to Tsalina and give her a strange look, only to realize that hey! We are team 127!! So now I’m a proud owner of a new bike pump to replace the one I lost.

Overall this was a great race to start off with, taught me a few things too. These are:
- I’m so unfit its not funny.
- So much slower than those 2 on the uphills.
- Damn those 2 are fit
- I managed to finish the whole race with the Green Xbox Goggles on.
So I guess for future races I’m goin to work extra hard on uphills both on the bike and foot. Can’t wait to the next race too. Thanks Luke & Tsalina for a great race.

Dekiru Yo takes Trivia prize

Tonight, Jason, Cherie, and I met up for dinner after work. With no set place to go, we wondered the streets of Pyrmont and finally made it down to Quarryman’s Hotel. Nothing special here I guess, but then it was trivia night. So we decided that had won us over and we would give it a go. Missed the first round of questions but we made up for it by logically guessing or collectively agreeing 9 out of 10, but actually knowing only a few questions.

There was also a word trivia game which the 3 of us breezed through, we got one wrong but that didn’t stop us from taking home the prize a 1.5K bottle of Penfold’s Koonunga Hill Shiraz Cabernet. Pretty sweet deal, we then kept on guessing our way through the rest of the rounds but finished in 4th spot I think. Out of like 7 teams. But still we won something. Jason had to carry it home to work out his shoulder. Damn heavy that thing. But woohoo cracked the winners circle!!
Who’s up for the next trivia night?

Photo censorship

Recently I read an article about how people should watch out who they take pictures of, and stuff. Make sure you don't offend no one or else they may come back and get you back financially.

But maybe its the way we are heading. We don't want people making fun of us, or ridiculing us, or profitting off us. what do people think?

Some call it art, some call it intrusion.

Spanish & Malaysian Festival

Great weather this weekend, with a lot of celebrations around town.

We started at the Malaysian festival, for some lunch. Was good to get some satays, Nasi Lemak, and also some Roti. But, I guess we didn't like waiting 1hr 30 mins just to eat.

Fun day, with lots of live performances and shows. But I guess the excitement died down so after we headed to Liverpool street to checkout the Spanish Festival.

The spanish festival was packed out in Liverpool street and lots of food and dancing.

Some spanish singers and dancers gave some great entertainment. Only we didn't know what they were singing, but sounded cool and it was an awesome party atmosphere. Definitely made me want to goto Spain.

For the rest of the photos from the festival check out Spanish Festival Photos at our photo website

Sydney Treasure Hunt - Just Trippin Dekiru Yo

On Saturday we competed in the Sydney Treasure Hunt which is a fundraiser for the National Breast Cancer Foundation. This is basically a team race around our great city in which your team gets clues and puzzles that you have to figure out to get to your next location where you get your next clue.

Usually a great day with lots of running and head scratching and today wasn’t going to be any different. This year our team consisted of Tsalina, Luke, YY, Karina and me. We were called Just Trippin Dekiru Yo.

The first clue saw us scratching our heads and running in a general direction. The clue was something like “After you eat 3 of these Ribs & Rumps, you may get your name on the wall but you won’t be able to climb the stairs” Which YY and I took as being Ribs & Rumps where if you eat 3 servings you get your name put on the wall in a brick. But the one I thought about was in Manly, and the one YY thought about was in Gordon. Karina suggested a place in Woolloomooloo which has some stairs that you run down. So we headed over there. But there was nothing.

So we just kept running around and around to every set of stairs in our zone. This one took us about 35-40mins and in the end we decided to run down to Opera House and luckily there it was. But one thing, they weren’t even on the stairs or near anything that resembled where they should be.

But anyway this really made us feel like being in the game, running around with no clear place to go. Oh what a feeling. Well after that first set back the rest was super cruisy. We raced from Opera house through to the Art Gallery, down to the pig near the State Library and then cleared the first two zones really quickly.


The next zone was around the central part around Hyde Park, down to QVB, Hilton Hotel, and Centrepoint. Our running was getting a bit fast and we seemed to be clearing the stages real quickly. Therefore based on our early forecast calculations we had time for a toilet break for the 2 girls.. I mean boys, YY and Luke.

Once we were all back into the action we headed to Darling Harbour area to “Share our story” down at the NT Tourist Office and raced around World Square, then to do our Chinese Laundry.

Clearing this zone we now had to head to the rocks which usually has causes some problems in the past. But this time we managed to get 4 out of the 5 real quickly and then we hit the super hard one which was something like “This hill was not cleared by a GBU28” now there was a few hills around the place and we figured it be some sort of gun placement or military thing. As we figured out that thee GBU28 was a bunker buster missile. But after running from Dawes Point Park to Observatory hill and back again, we couldn’t find anything and was starting to run low of water and getting tired.

We started to get really down. We been here for about 25mins now looking everywhere we thought we could think of, then we discovered a place called Bunker Hill and thought hey let’s give this a go. Low and behold we found it, and now the race was done. Time to run back to the finish line. I tried to take many short cuts but due to the multitude of construction happening in the city had to run a lot more than I thought. But in the end we sprinted home just in front of another team. We were quite confident we had won now, but finishing 20 mins before time and the presentation being 2 hours away the decision was made to go freshen up and stretch at fitness first.

Spent a bit of time stretching and mucking around on the bongo board, watching Luke and Tsalina trying to do moves on the bongo was funny. But after about 25 mins YY hadn’t showed up. Maybe he fell asleep in the car. But finally at about 2:50pm almost 1 hour later he shows. Tsalina, Karina and I decide that hang on, we better get down to the presentation by 3:30pm at least. So Luke waits for YY.

As we crossing Elizabeth St I look over and see that people are gathering around the podium and that they are clapping as people head up to the stage. Maybe they have started presentation and all. So we scoot along to the stage and just as we get there, you hear “and in third place” we thought ahhaha Luke and YY aren’t going to be here if we win this. “in second place was ….” Forgot the name.. the 2 still ain’t here. And finally “and the Winner of the City Treasure Hunt for 2006 is …. Just Trippin Dekiru Yo” Tsalina and Karina jump for joy as I run up with them to accept our prize. We pose for all the winner photos, with big smiles on our faces. There is still only 3 of us on the podium we keep thinking where are they… Now the winners had been announced everyone started congratulating us and mostly people filed away. But those 2 lovers still hadn’t showed. Until another 15 minutes passed. So we told YY and Luke that we hadn’t won and that we missed out. YY was devastated as he had done his hair and make up just for the occasion.

But in the end after all the laughter we let them in on our secret and we were now all going sailing. WOHOOO!!!!! Til next year!